A very simple black-to-white gradient can only be, at most, 256 pixels wide before it starts banding on the majority of computers that use SDR displays. HDR only gives you a couple extra bits where each bit doubles how wide the gradient can be before it starts running out of unique color values. If the two color endpoints of the gradient are closer together, you get banding sooner. Dithering completely solves gradient banding.
The average desktop computer is running with 8 bit color depth the vast majority of the time, so find or generate basically any wide basic gradient and you'll see it.
Acerola recently made a video about how Silk Song has banding with dark colors due to poor dithering (and how to fix it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au9pce-xg5s
Highly recommend for any graphics programmer that might think dithering is unnecessary or simply a "aesthetic choice".
To lend more credibility, the devs added more dithering in the next patch.
A very simple black-to-white gradient can only be, at most, 256 pixels wide before it starts banding on the majority of computers that use SDR displays. HDR only gives you a couple extra bits where each bit doubles how wide the gradient can be before it starts running out of unique color values. If the two color endpoints of the gradient are closer together, you get banding sooner. Dithering completely solves gradient banding.
A great many can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither
(also a very nice explanation of why dithering is a fundamental signal processing step applicable to many fields, not just an "aesthetic".)
Interesting!
The average desktop computer is running with 8 bit color depth the vast majority of the time, so find or generate basically any wide basic gradient and you'll see it.
I think you mean 24 bit. 8 bit would only be 256 colors total.
8 bits for each of R G and B. So a grey-scale gradient indeed has only 256 colors available. Any gradient also will have about that many at most.
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see eg https://xcancel.com/theo/status/1978161273214058786?s=46